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The ukulele enjoyed a resurgence in the early fifties after
being promoted on television by Arthur Godfrey. Coincidentally
at this same time there was a resurgence of interest in Dixieland
(or traditional jazz) which had previously been popular during
the twenties. Once again, though, the rise to prominence of
folk music in the sixties as described above caused guitars
to remain the most popular instrument by far. About this time
the classical and flamenco guitarists were appearing on TV
and nylon-string guitars were being imported from Sweden.
Ukuleles were relegated to the status of toys and even rare
Martin ukuleles were being sold for $15 or $20 at garage sales.
All the major manufacturers of ukuleles either went out of
business or discontinued their ukulele lines except for Kamaka,
a company in Hawaii.
In the late sixties Tiny Tim became famous after he appeared
on the Laugh In and the Johnny Carson Shows. But even though
he was a competent performer with the ukulele, his personal
style may have resulted in a net loss for the popularity of
the instrument. Later on in the sixties and into the seventies
and continuing into the present day, Ian Whitcomb began playing
and recording ukulele performances. He was a former rock star
who found more satisfaction with Tin-Pan-Alley-type music.
He appeared on the Johnny Carson Show and at various jazz
festivals and has published many books including a number
intended for ukulele players. These have a CD in the back
with recordings of Ian’s band playing the songs in the book.
In order to give the reader a better perspective on the viewpoint
that the ukulele is not really a folk instrument I am going
to outline a brief history of popular music in America. Popular
music in America can generally be thought of as fitting into
one of two categories: that of folk music which includes blues,
bluegrass, country and western as well as folk songs, and
on the other hand that of music that is written and performed
by professionals and interested amateurs from sheet music.
Of course, these two categories have a lot of influence on
each other. Since early folk music was not written down and
was not recorded we have to depend on the sounds of the versions
that have been handed down over the generations to know what
the early folk music sounded like. We can tell more about
music that was written in sheet-music form although in many
cases we don’t know exactly how the instruments that were
used to perform it actually sounded.
In America a unique set of circumstances existed from the
middle of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century
resulting in the composition of what is probably the best
and most voluminous collection of popular music in history,
and by a considerable margin.
The earliest professional popular music was in minstrel shows
such as performed by Ed Christy’s minstrels and many other
minstrel troops who introduced some of the first hit American
songs such as “Way Down Upon the Swanee River”, “Oh, Susannah”,
“Dixie” and “Old Dan Tucker”. Originally these shows had singers
accompanied by fiddle, banjo, tambourine and bones (for rhythm).
Later other instruments were introduced also. At the end of
the 19th century minstrel shows declined in popularity as
the vaudeville shows rose into prominence. Stephen Foster
and Daniel Emmett were two of the great American songwriters
whose songs were made popular by minstrel shows.
At about this time, in the last decades of the 19th century,
the music business as a business began to take shape in New
York City. In that town composers, performers and publishers
from all over America and from Europe came to achieve success.
The piano had become an extremely popular instrument and was
even a fixture in the homes of the Lower-East-Side immigrants
who were not particularly affluent. The fact that composers
and performers from various places in Europe as well as various
parts of the United States all were gathered together in New
York City led to a great flowering of musical talent such
as had never existed before. The widespread availability of
pianos created a demand for sheet music enabling composers
to make a living just by composing songs. This resulted in
a highly professional group of gentlemen who came to work
in a small area of New York City that was christened Tin Pan
Alley.
As an example of some of the things that then happened, consider
ragtime music which developed from a combination of the syncopated
rhythm of southern Negro music with melodies and harmonies
from Eastern Europe.
W. C. Handy, composer of the “St. Louis Blues”, taught music
at A & M College in Huntsville, Alabama, and later had
a marching band and dance orchestra. At one of his performances
he was impressed when a group of three local black men came
on stage and performed a blues number with which the audience
was more favorably impressed than it was with the music that
Handy was playing at the time. This caused Handy, a black
man, to take his knowledge of black folk songs and write the
“Memphis Blues”, the first popular recorded blues song in
history. Later he wrote the “St. Louis Blues”, which was a
much bigger hit. Handy’s ability to read and write music enabled
him to set the blues on paper so that it could be sold profitably
and recorded by other artists. “Swanee” composed by George
Gershwin and performed by Al Jolson combines the european-type
chords with a sort of ragtime tempo.
Eubie Blake’s family had a pump organ which he began to play
before the age of six. After that he took piano lessons and
became interested in ragtime. (Presumably people taking piano
lessons at that period would have had a lot of exposure to
the European composers.) His talent and background led him
to become one of the first black composers to write a Broadway
hit which was named Shuffle Along. The hit song from this
was “I’m Just Wild About Harry” which is still a very popular
number today.
In 1917, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band moved to New York
City and became very popular after recording the world’s first
jazz record, The Dixie Jazz Band One Step. This ushered in
the jazz age. After 1910 the professional music business was
a three-cornered stool. One leg was Vaudeville, another Broadway,
and the third, Tin Pan Alley. Tin Pan Alley referred to a
small area of New York where the music publishers were located.
The location changed from time to time. Tin Pan Alley also
referred to the industry of writing and publishing songs.
Beginning at about 1890 it became possible for a composer
to make a living by writing and having his songs published
and it became possible for publishing companies to have a
viable business publishing and selling sheet music. As the
business developed the expertise of the songwriters increased
and greater talent was attracted to the industry. As things
picked up in 1910 and into the twenties and thirties, the
situation evolved such that one song might have two or even
three writers. The composer would write the music and one
or two writers would write the lyrics. This gave rise to songwriting
teams such as DeSilva, Brown and Henderson who wrote “Button
Up Your Overcoat”, “You’re the Cream in My Coffee,” and the
“The Best Things in Life are Free”. This team approach stands
in stark contrast to today’s world where every musician wants
to compose all of his own music and in some cases to compose
it on the spot while he is performing. Not only did the Tin-Pan-Alley
songs have multiple authors, they also had professional arrangers
to find just the right chords to set off the melodies. Then
when these songs appeared in Broadway shows, professional
arrangers were hired at great expense to orchestrate the songs
for best effect. Since these songs, at the time they were
composed, were intended to be published as sheet music, there
was no requirement that they should be easily memorized and
no requirement that they should use a small number of familiar
chords so that they could be played by a musically uneducated
(although possibly talented) rural individual.
Since people were mostly buying sheet music to play on the
piano, the purchaser would naturally be more sophisticated
than the average listener of radio or TV today. This type
of person was also more likely to go to the Broadway shows
than the average tourist who goes to New York these days.
Some of the big publishing houses were actually owned by composers
such as Irving Berlin. They were usually men of discrimination
and taste and the music they published reflected this fact.
The sheet music for the popular songs of the twenties and
thirties was such that the arrangements could be played by
an amateur piano player and in many cases the vocal range
was limited to about an octave so that an amateur could sing
it. These were about the only constraints on this music. Because
of their great variety of chords, rhythms and key changes
these songs are difficult to memorize and mostly they are
not memorized, they are played from sheet music. To sight
read this on a piano requires a lot of years of practice,
but to be able to use the chord diagrams for the ukulele and
play with the piano or with a singer is much less difficult.
For the player who is used to a guitar, this can probably
be accomplished in just a few weeks or months. As explained
earlier, chords that are difficult or impossible for me to
play on a guitar are very easy on a ukulele. It is also much
easier to strum the ukulele which only requires use of your
fingernail than it is a guitar which has steel strings which
must be strummed with some kind of pick. Of course it is possible
to use a guitar that is strung with nylon strings but this
still gives you two more strings to deal with and the distances
between the frets are much farther than is the case on the
ukulele. Furthermore after the chord is played on the ukulele
the sound dies away much faster than on a guitar which means
that the rhythm can be a little bouncier with the ukulele.
In contrast to the Tin Pan Alley and show business songs that
were written by the pros in New York, another sort of music
came from the amateurs in the South and the West and the Appalachian
regions. Since this music was not written down or recorded
until after the twenties and thirties we don’t necessarily
know as much about it as we would like. Some people think
that the bluegrass sound was more or less invented by Bill
Monroe in the forties and did not exist earlier. Even though
the bluegrass sound is very complicated and may be very difficult
to play it is based on only a few chord changes and when there
are lyrics the lyrics are repetitious and not really very
complicated. This is the same situation as found with blues
songs and other country songs. A large part of the blues instrumental
music consists of bass runs on the two lowest strings of the
guitar. This is obviously better suited to guitar than ukulele.
The rock music heard today is a development of the early blues
music which was jazzed up by performers such as Joe Turner.
Initially this music was called “rhythm and blues”. It was
later renamed “rock and roll” when the country performer,
Bill Haley, recorded “Rock Around the Clock”. In my opinion
the last fifty years of so-called rock-and-roll music have
merely had variations of the early rhythm and blues numbers
that were performed by such great artists as Joe Turner, Hank
Ballard and Bo Diddley.
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